January's Reverbs

flying out to India for an interview, pitching to Walmart, Dubai Dharmayatra, progress in my focus process and much more.

Rhythm Doshi

Feb 06, 2023

January.

A fresh start.

A new year.

A new episode.

This year is going to be crazy.

If you don’t know who I am;

Hey there 👋

My name is Rhythm Doshi and I am a 15 y/o that lives in Dubai 🌆 who is working on some pretty legit stuff in the blockchain + web3 space. I’m obsessed with self-development & growth, It has transitioned to becoming an ideal/principle that is firmly etched and woven into the fabric of my life’s principles.

⚡My natural inclinations revolve around:

blockchain, web3, crypto, & decentralization of the future.
space technologies.
philosophy & philosophical frameworks.
consciousness, meditation, and enlightenment.
neuroscience and psychology.
psychedelics & ego-dissolution.
building startups + products, economics & business.

Now that you know who I am, let’s dive into the exciting stuff I did/worked on in the month of January.

💼 Pitching to Walmart at 15.

Yes, you read that right.

My team and I made it to the top 5 of the Global Sprint Challenge at TKS and got an opportunity to present our idea — Skip the Q to some of the top executives Walmart’s Innovation Incubator — Walmart Blue Labs, live on a zoom call! To learn more about sprint challenge, head over to my previous newsletter :)

sh*t had just gotten real. We were in the real world, pitching to a real company, in-front of real executives, something that is completely beyond a high-schooler’s imagination & most certainly out of their bubble. The adrenaline was pumping and my hands were randomly moving as if I was speaking to no-one practicing the pitch lol.

From practicing the deck in-front of the mirror to pitching at 2:00 am was one hell of an experience. Huge shoutout to my team - Ada, Jiya & Rana along with the wonderful executives from Walmart - Julia Pelotto, Colton Schwenk & Juan Caride for recognizing our ideas & solutions and providing us with some really valuable feedback. I definitely took away gold mines of experiences, insights & feedback.

💪 Takeaways:

Make it real:
— all is fun and games until it comes to activating a solution in the real world. Just theory limits exploration & insight into the real-working of a potential solution/disruptive idea.
— Customer validation is the defining moment and we ensured that by reaching out to customers & end-users whose pain-points ultimately were the roots of our solution using surveys & cold-emailing industry leaders and experts to acquire their valuable experience. We definitely gathered data but didn’t shed light to it as much as we did on the solution.
— Balance is key, sometimes the solution can be extremely simple & non-interesting but if you can show that there are customers finding it a valuable change rather a paradigmatic shift in their lives because of it, then I would say that solution is brilliant.
Show > Tell:
— Showing rather than telling single handedly is a game-changer. Humans are wired to gravitate towards visual experiences and are more drawn to seeing something in effect.
— This is something our solution lacked, we definitely had an amazing product/solution in theory but no tangibles to visualize that in-store experience of actually using the product.
The Nutshell Explanation:
— This is something that is not just limited to pitches & speeches but also casual conversation. Explaining a concept in a nutshell is key to presenting an idea/opinion to someone because it slips into their subconscious and allows in-depth explanations to seep through better + faster. It adds more clarity and overall improves the flow of the presentation.
— Explaining something in a nutshell is essentially a verbal tl’dr.

Overall, it was an incredible experience to have and I’m super grateful for this opportunity.

✈️ Flying out to Pune for an Interview.

It was a pretty uneventful day with a gloomy evening that I spent falling down Internet rabbit holes until I clicked on Gmail.

As soon as it opened, my eyes drew towards the first email titled, “UWC (India) Selection Interview.”

I jumped the f*** out of my chair and ran outside to tell my parents that I got through the second round of UWC!

wait, hold up, what is UWC, what is this interview, wtf you talking about rhythm?

let’s backtrack a little bit;

It was the month of November when I was writing my essays and attaching my transcripts as part of my application process to an extremely prestigious institution — UWC. UWC is an international with campuses in 18 countries around the globe. They are not just a school;

but they are a movement.

A movement to provide the highest quality of education to people from all walks of life.

They offer the IB curriculum for grades 11 & 12 and are extremely selective in their application process.

The amount of resources, network, people & values that UWC has to offer caught my attention and led me to apply to further complete my high school and I got in through the first round which had an acceptance rate of ~8% !

I flew out to Pune, India for my interview day at UWC and had such a blast. The interview process was something extremely unique and was tailored towards really getting to know us & our personality.

We landed at 4:00 am and boarded the bus to the beautiful campus in the Mulshi Valley — an extremely beautiful hilly region in the outskirts of Pune at 7 am and were greeted with students & staff, all from different parts of the world! We had a scrumptious breakfast and spent our day on campus for our Interview! It consisted of games, discussion groups, personal interviews, campus tours & lovely interaction with all the phenomenal students & staff on campus. The day started at 9 am and ended at 6 pm.

I had an incredible time at UWC and made friends with some of the most interesting, diverse, unique and talented people from all four corners of the world.

Huge shoutout to Helan — one of the sweetest & friendliest persons along with all the first year students I met on campus, y’all were the best <3

Here’s to y’all seeing Aarav 2.0 on campus ;) (ifykyk)

🧬 Focus Hackathon — ChainRx

Each year, 1.2 million people die as a result of antibiotic resistance.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria evolve in reaction to the effects of antibiotic medications and become resistant to them, requiring hospitalization for an infection that could previously be managed at home. Furthermore, the buildup of this makes treating major illnesses like blood poisoning or TB more difficult.

Resistance is typically caused by the abuse or overuse of these treatments; for example, giving wrong antibiotics or taking excessive doses when not essential can cause germs to become resistant.

According to the World Health Organization, more than half of antibiotics in several countries are being misused, exacerbating the situation. Without effective intervention, this global issue has the potential to kill 10 million people and spend $100 trillion in medical care yearly by 2050.

In order to tackle this pressing problem, we worked on ChainRx — a decentralized & distributed ledger technology that operates on a private blockchain and inputs prescription data in it in a standardized format which them using consensus mechanisms is permissioned control and is given to public health authorities to monitor over prescription & potential outbreaks.

This was a one of a kind experience that had lots in store for me, MASSIVE shoutout to In-Woo, Ziyana & Ronit for being such a W team, y’all are incredibly fun to work with and have really valuable ideas. Super grateful to them for elevating this experience for me ;)

🕊️Dubai Dharmayatra¹: A Spiritual Retreat in Ecstasy.

In the month of January, my guru, my world, my life, stepped foot into the land of Dubai and I had the three most unforgettable days of my life. Being in his aura is a life-changing experience. The love he has showered cannot be described by words and the only thing I felt was infinite grace. His level is beyond anyone’s while being a part of us at the same time. From attending the life-changing spiritual discourses to the retreat in the desert spending some of my life’s most valued moments with him in his divine presence were some of the best days of my life.

The Dubai Youth Group — a group with just the youth devoted to growing together in the presence of Bapa (what we call our guru with love) also performed a skit at the retreat themed around “Addictions & Passions” and we pledged one addiction to get rid off and one passion to work on in 2023 to Bapa! I absolutely loved being a part of it. From spending hours practicing, eating noodles for fuel at 10 pm to re-recording the voice overs cause of constantly just bursting out in laughter, everything was worth it. Shoutout to all my lovely DYG members out there.

In-short I will never forget these precious moments and I will forever be in debt to my guru who has done so much for me. I love him with all my heart <3

1 - Dharmayatra: a spiritual retreat.

🧑‍💻 Learning Solidity, Writing a Smart Contract & Building a DApp.

This month witnessed some substantial progress in my focus process

that I am completing in the realm of Blockchain & Web3. I started learning Solidity + JavaScript and wrote my first smart contract! I am currently working on building a DApp that saves insightful twitter threads on the blockchain. I’m working on this to get my foot into the door and to really ship something to the real world and get some insight into the nitty gritty and technicalities of building a DApp, I will be publishing an article + video along with my DApp very soon.

In the coming few months I will be working on some pretty legit stuff like building a DApp to make the Diamond Supply Chain more transparent and many other interesting projects to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems! To stay updated with my journey considering hitting the subscribe button :)

✴️ January’s Deep Reverb:

This section of my newsletter is going to be devoted to discussing various emotions that I’m feeling and my thoughts/opinions and takeaways from learning more about them as part of my internal project/journey to find out my true & authentic self.

😫 Burnouts:

Burnouts.

That feeling of just millions of thoughts running around your head;

Completely loosing the ability to focus one task.

That feeling of just sleeping and doing nothing because you’re just way too tired to do anything.

Let’s face it, we’ve all faced a burnout atleast once in our lifetimes.

This month was extremely hectic, there was a lot going on, from exams, to travelling to India while working on the hackathon from the airport to pitching to Walmart merely hours after landing in Dubai. I was burnt the f’*** out. I was spread out so thin that I could not get literally not get myself to focus on a single thing.

This is how I was feeling towards the end of January in a nutshell.

Burnout → Garbage Focus Levels → Incomplete work → Guilty → Mental Health went 📉

In my opinion, tackling burnouts is a skill, a soft skill that is extremely valuable in the world of the fast & busy. I did a deep dive into burnouts to truly understand the root cause and how they can be tackled and will be publishing an in-depth article on my findings along with evidence based tools to prevent them. Stay tuned!

ps: if you are someone that faces regular burnouts and want to talk about their experience & how you cope with them, feel free to set up a 1:1 with me using my Calendly :)

📸 January’s Picture Collage:

😍 The Favorites Wall:

here is a list of my favorite tidbits of internet content that I came across in January!

💭 Favorite Quote of the Month:

“All sensual pleasures are like painkillers because they give instant relief & gratification, but they also come with lifelong side effects.”
~Pujya Gurudevrshi Rakesh Jhaveri